Stop Working and Start Watching This Simpsons Christmas Marathon

"Then on came the TV and we started to doze through all the exciting Christmas-themed shows," Bart says at the end of his version of "The Night Before Christmas" which first aired as a Simpsons short on The Tracey Ullman Show on the night of December 18, 1988. Nearly 30 years later, The Simpsons is still a juggernaut, and it has amassed enough seasonal episodes to fill a full week of programming.

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Now through December 31, FXX is running a back-to-back Simpsons marathons featuring some of the show's greatest holiday episodes. There's "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," the very first episode from the very first season, a.k.a. the Santa's Little Helper origin story. There's "Marge Be Not Proud," where Bart steals Bonestorm from the Try-N-Save. And, of course, "Grift of the Magi," where Gary Coleman helps the gang fight off the new hit Christmas toy, Funzo.

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It's through these moments, and many others, that The Simpsons helped develop the modern formula for the sitcom Christmas episode. Over the years (and specifically in the early days), The Simpsons was one of few shows that depicted a lower middle-class family struggling through the consumerism of Christmas. In that first episode, Homer loses his Christmas bonus, and there's a touching scene where he's buying cheap gifts for the family. It's a nice balance of emotion, comedy, and realism–even in a cartoon!–that makes The Simpsons Christmas episodes better than most cliched, sickeningly sweet things you'll find on TV this time of year.